This blog post has been updated by Kristina Rust, Career Consultant on February 28, 2024 for relevancy, inclusivity, and formatting.
Backstage Pass To “What Can I Do With a Major In..” Handouts and How They Compare to the LinkedIn Alumni Tool
Depending on the day, a quick Google search on “What Can I Do With a Major In” may or may not return the UGA Career Center website as Google’s first choice, but the webpage will surely make its appearance on the first page of all Google searches!
Each "What Can I Do with a Major in…” page includes a description of the major, possible job titles, actual employers who hired UGA students in recent years, top resources, UGA campus contacts, and other employment and informational websites. The secret behind the data supplementing this great resource is UGA’s Annual Career Outcomes Survey. Each year, these handouts are updated to reflect industry trends and display the most current employment information based on a fresh set of career outcomes data from UGA’s previous graduating class.
The purpose of the Career Outcomes Survey is to provide a snapshot of the employment or continuing education status for University of Georgia graduates (Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate) within an average of 6 months of their graduation date. Additionally, the data provides detailed employment information, salary statistics, and graduate school information. The data is collected via an ongoing online survey, completed by individual alumni or student callers who obtain employment information over the phone, through social media searches, or via collaboration with various UGA departments or organizational campus units. Data is presented by university, school, and major and is readily available at the UGA Career Center website. Through technology tools, data integration, and easy to view and navigate displays, tables, infographic, and video, the UGA Career Center has vastly improved the user experience and made our outcomes data more relevant.
Likewise, the LinkedIn Alumni Tool is also readily available on the UGA Career Center website. It allows you to explore your major’s employment by location, company name, and industry. While UGA Career Outcomes data is based on responses and is reported annually, the LinkedIn data comes from 150,000+ students and alumni profiles in LinkedIn. These reports are dynamically created and change constantly. While comparing the Career Outcomes reports from year-to-year could be useful in spotting an early trend in the job market, LinkedIn reporting will give you a broad overview or how the specific job market looks like today. In contrast, by comparing UGA Career Outcomes reports, you may or may not be surprised to learn that the full-time employment rate for Biological Science majors increased significantly, and almost doubled, in the last couple of years.
Finally, while the type of data both systems report is similar, there is one important data piece LinkedIn Alumni Tool is missing: salaries and bonus. Minimum, maximum, and median salary and median in bonus by major are reported in the UGA Career Outcomes reports (provided there were at least 4 responses). While many of our students work in the southeastern region of the country, please keep in mind that compensation numbers are reported as received and without regards of cost of living when interpreting these numbers.